


here at the end of all things

by wolvenkings



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), Star Trek
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minor Character Death, YOLO, eventual mckirk but first bickering, mckirk - Freeform, more like friends to old married couple, not graphic, salty leonard is salty, the pacific rim au that no one asked for and probably already exists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-17 06:43:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11270124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolvenkings/pseuds/wolvenkings
Summary: "I've spent so long living in the past, I guess I never gave the future much thought."Until now. Until you. Until here, the end of everything.McCoy smiled."I always did have terrible timing."





	1. where would you rather die

Leonard McCoy was watching a category four rip Sydney a new one when the chopper landed just outside of the construction zone. He drew his mouth into a tight line and stepped out into the dust so graciously kicked up by the chopper’s blades and steels himself to have a conversation that he’d been avoiding, successfully mind you, for five years.

  
It had been five years. Five years since he walked away from the Jeager program. Hell, more like stumbled out with a gaping hole in his mind and heart where his co-pilot used to be. Five years since Jocelyn had left, taking the house and everything else with her. She had her reasons, he shouldn’t fault her for it. She said he’d never really come back from that drop. He didn’t, she was right. He faulted her anyway. Five years since he had first used his hands, once famously steady with a scalpel, to wield a welding torch in order to raise the Wall.

Admiral Pike stepped down from the chopper and marched right up to him, clapped him on the shoulder, and greeted him by his given name. McCoy managed a tight smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. They never did anymore.  
“Admiral,” his voice was more clipped than he had intended.  
“McCoy,” the admiral was smiling, but it was tense. He wouldn’t be here unless he was truly desperate and they both knew it. “You’re looking well.”  
“You’re not much for lying, sir,” McCoy pointed out mildly. Curious eyes turned away from the devastation on the news; McCoy could feel their weight on the back of his neck.  
“I imagine you didn’t fly all this way just because you missed my pretty face,” he goaded, “walk with me.”  
“You’re not wrong,” the admiral said as they walked away from the chopper, from the crowd, from the looming wall. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, McCoy. Manilla, San Francisco, Sao Paulo. Doesn’t help that you never return a phone call.”  
“I’m always in the same spot,” McCoy shrugged, “at the top of this damn thing. The city is irrelevant. Man’s gotta make a living.”  
He craned his neck to peer up at the looming monstrosity and the admiral did the same. It wouldn’t hold. They both knew it. The entire world knew it now, thanks to that thing in Sydney.  
“A man has to be alive in order to make that living,” the admiral begins and McCoy sighs, because here it is.  
“I know what you want, Admiral, and I can’t. I can’t do that again.” His hands had begun shaking and he balled them into tight fists. He took a deep breath and then another and let them out slowly, slowly. One..two..three..

  
He had still been connected to Chapel when she died. He felt everything, saw everything, until there was nothing, nothing but the pull of the Jaeger on his own brain. He didn’t know how he made it back to shore. He often wished he hadn’t. He couldn’t go back to that.  
“I understand your reservations, McCoy,” the admiral said in that tone of his, almost paternal and damned frustrating, “I wouldn’t be here unless I truly had no other choice. There’s an old Jaeger, you might remember her. Nuclear, Mark-3? The last of her kind and she needs a pilot.”  
McCoy looked at his shoes, at the wall, anywhere but the admiral. He hadn’t thought about Gipsy in months. She had been home to him once, a second skin, but in his dreams she was a tomb. Still, he couldn’t stand the thought of someone else piloting her. Not that anyone could without being retrained. He was the last of the Mark-3 pilots.  
He took another deep breath to even out his breathing. One..two..three. He flexed his hands.

  
“How bad is it?” he asked, already well aware that he truly doesn’t want to know.  
“Bad.” Pike never was one to sugar coat anything. “Our funding has been cut, all future Jaegers have been decommissioned. What we have is all that we will ever have and that’s why I need you, Leonard. We have to act fast.”  
McCoy looked at him for the first time, his brow raised skeptically. “You’re going for the breach.”  
Of course they were. That was always the plan, had always been the plan, and the plan had always failed.  
He doesn’t give the admiral time to respond.  
“We’ve tried that before,” he sighed, beyond frustrated, “It won’t work, damnit. It never works.”  
“Just let me worry about that for now,” Pike said calmly and McCoy could have sworn there was a twinkle in the old man’s eyes. “It’s the end of the world, Leonard. Haven’t you noticed? Now tell me, where would you rather die? Up there on your wall, or in a Jaeger?”  
McCoy sighed, defeated, and cast one last look at the wall. He supposed Gipsy’s just a good a tomb as any.


	2. coming home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy arrives at the Shatterdome.

McCoy was exhausted by the time the chopper landed outside of the Shatterdome, as Pike called it. He had always hated flying, had always preferred to have both feet planted safely on terra firma, and would have gladly injected himself with a sedative to have slept through that hellscape of a flight if he had been able. Instead he spent the majority of the flight questioning Pike about his brilliant plan to destroy the breach only to be met with vague replies and no small amount of side-stepping. He could have kissed the asphalt when they landed. He didn’t. But he could have.

The physical damage he sustained five years prior was contained mostly to his left arm and shoulder, it left his arm stiff and his hand weak and trembling, but both hands were shaking as he stepped down from the helicopter. Outside of the Shatterdome was an uproar of movement, organized chaos as supplies and crewmen arrived and departed. He allowed himself a moment to take it all in, these, the last of the Jaeger crews, their pilots, their engineers, their maintenance teams, the brave, reckless, damned fools that stood as the last line between toxic blue hell and the world. He didn’t belong there, he never had. He was a healer, or had been, not a hero and certainly not a fighter. 

McCoy was almost thankful when someone approached. At the very least, he welcomed the distraction.  
“Ah, Mister Spock,” Admiral Pike greeted the man warmly.  
“Admiral,” Mister Spock’s voice was mild, professional, and completely align with his near expressionless face. McCoy took him instantly for a man that was frighteningly in control and knew he wouldn’t want to be around if that control was ever lost. A second thought not a moment later: He also probably wouldn’t be half bad at poker if he ever bothered to play.  
“Doctor.”  
It took McCoy a moment to realize that Mister Spock was addressing him.  
“Not anymore,” he responded, perhaps a little too gruffly, but he nodded in greeting nonetheless and extended his hand.  
Spock eyed it, took it in a firm shake, and released it just as quickly.  
Mister Spock was observant, it seemed. He noticed McCoy's shaking hands and put two and two together, McCoy could practically see the realization in his black eyes but he said nothing else.

Spock was tolerable, at least for the moment. He had approached him with no expectations and therefore was not let down by what he saw. It was refreshing. Watching the light dim in someone’s eyes after they realized what was left of Leonard McCoy was nothing but skin and bones got old and it got old fast.

 

“Mister Spock is one of our brightest,” Pike explained and ushered them along, out of the wind and the threatening rain, “he has proven to be a master of reining in his emotions, making him one of our most adaptable pilots. He is also in charge of the Mark-3 restoration program and has personally selected each of your potential co-pilots. He also assists with the kaiju research department-”  
“Do you ever sleep, Mister Spock?” McCoy raised a brow.  
“Six hours on average. Why do you ask?”  
“I believe that was a joke, Mister Spock,” Pike explained as they stepped inside of the Shatterdome.  
“Ah,” Mister Spock nodded, his hands clasped behind his back. He seemed completely desensitized to the scale and tumult of the Shatterdome and continued without pause even as they were nearly plowed over by a forklift, “I see. Humor aside, Mister McCoy-” he had nearly said ‘doctor’, McCoy noticed “-I hope that you will approve of my choices for your co-pilot candidate. I have thoroughly reviewed your personal and drop files in order to choose the best possible recruits.”  
_And you didn’t even by me dinner first_ , McCoy thought to himself. He hated the idea of someone perusing through his files, but he supposed if anyone had to, he would prefer it be Spock. He doubted Spock gained personal joy from anything, much less learning all of the juicy details of another person’s tragedy.  
“I can hardly wait,” McCoy replied as he glanced around the massive hangar.  
“Humor?” Spock asked, brow raised. The slight gesture was magnified by the usual stillness of his face.  
_More like thinly veiled misery_ , McCoy thought.  
“You're catching on,” he said.

 

He let Pike and Spock lead him around the Shatterdome. Some faces he recognized, crewmen from other stations, and a few pilots. Few being the operative term. There were so few of them left and so many fresh faces, so many new lives to be lost.  
_That's why I'm here_ , he told himself. _If I can save even just one of them, it will have been worth it._

“McCoy, you Bambi eyed bastard! Where have you been all of my life?”  
McCoy spun to face the very familiar, very Scottish voice and was met with an embrace strong enough to crack his back.  
“As ruggedly handsome as ever, I see,” Montgomery Scott released McCoy to hold him at arm’s length and surveyed him like an estranged auntie, “a little thin but no worse for wear. Not even a single grey hair! Absolutely disgusting, I say. I hear you spent time on top of that wall, yeah? Lot of good it did if Sydney’s any example and what, phones don't work up there? Five years! Five years and not one phone call, why I-”  
“It's good to see you too, Scott,” McCoy interrupted before Scott went too deep into his tirade, which he very happily would have.  
“Yeah, yeah,” Scott said with a dismissive sniff and wave of his hand, “glad you could join us, you grizzled southern dream. Come on, why don't you? I'll show to your Jaeger, if the good admiral will permit it.”  
“Of course, Mister Scott,” Admiral Pike inclined his head for Scott to lead the way.  
“Perhaps you can fill us in on the fleet’s progress?”  
McCoy smiled a little at the name. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps often went by another name, coined from the inside and purely self serving: starfleet.  
  
“Well I don't have much to work with, do I?” Scott grumbled, “that big Russian rig is ready to either take or deliver a pounding, preferably the latter, and that whiz kid you loaned me insists that the entirety of the Jaeger program was dreamed up in Russia. Smart kid, though. I like ‘im. Remind me to introduce you to him.”  
“Sure thing,” McCoy said, but Mister Scott was already well along his way.  
McCoy assumed he was talking about Morozko, a Mark-1 from the Siberian border patrol. McCoy had never personally worked with that one, but with 9 confirmed kills the Jaeger and its pilots were well known in the fleet.  
“There she is.” Scott had led them to the maintenance bay. Five Jaegers stared down at them, man made titans being readied for war. Sparks flew as teams of men and women swarmed over the giant bodies to make repairs and adjustments.  
“The largest and heaviest we have, piloted by the Sergievskys. Not a talkative pair, those two. Moving on, we have our remaining Mark-4s: Konungen and Vulcan, the latter piloted by our own tall, pale wonder Mister Spock. She's an impressive thing, seventy-six metres, seventeen hundred tons, fifty engines per strand, and seven kills under her belt. Oh and there-”  
“Here we go,” Pike said with a sigh. There was a hint of fondness that betrayed his flat tone.  
“Here we go, indeed,” Scott continued, very dutifully ignoring the admiral’s ire as he gestured up as a massive, glistening Jaeger.  
She was new, McCoy could see that much. Her hull was far too clean, too pure to have ever seen combat.  
“The first and only Mark-5,” Scott positively swooned, “Codename: Enterprise. This great white beauty is my pride and joy. Sixteen hundred metres, seventeen hundred pounds, and a thermonuclear core. She was modeled in no small part after most Mark-3s, but this lass is special. She’s outfitted with triple plasma cannons, dual swords, manual and automatic evacuation pods, and a little something I like to call warp drive. Purely facetious, mind you, she’s just a bit quick, a little less clunky.”  
“Sounds like too much for two pilots to safely handle,” McCoy pointed out mildly which earned him a growl from Scott.  
“Exactly why our noble world leaders and dear Admiral here have given up on her. Oh, ye of little faith. Not enough man power, they say, too risky they say. Bah. Crimson Typhoon had three pilots and no one batted an eye at that. I know, I know, that one ended in disaster. Ah well, we work with what we have, right Admiral?” Scott sighed with all of the derision of a man repeating words that he had heard too many times.  
  
“Come along, then, let’s show you to your Gipsy. She’s had a few upgrades, new hull, no alloys, five engines per strand, but she’s still yours, old friend.”  
McCoy had long since stopped listening, his sable eyes fixed up on the massive machine that seemed to be staring down at him in silent question. _Where have you been? Where did you go?_  
His chest felt tight and he clenched his fist. Looking at Gipsy was both like coming home and watching your home burn.  
“You alright there?” Scott asked him after a moment, concern wrought on his face.  
McCoy shook himself from his stupor and cleared his throat.  
“Yeah,” he lied. “Yeah, I, uh- long day. Long flight.”  
“Perhaps this would be the appropriate time to escort Mister McCoy to his quarters,” Spock suggested cooly, “permission to be dismissed, Admiral?”  
“Granted,” Pike acquiesced, “McCoy, get some rest. Report to the red wing at 0800 to test your co-pilot candidates.”  
“Sir,” McCoy acknowledged and clenched his hands even tighter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was much, much longer but had to be broken up into two separate chapters for sanity's sake. tbh, i hate this but I'm trying to be more confident in myself and in writing in general so I'm going to force myself to see it through. thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy it.


	3. a little hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy can't sleep

Mister Spock showed McCoy to his quarters and promptly departed, for which McCoy was grateful. He hadn’t been subjected to so much conversation in years and honestly, he was exhausted.   
He let his bag fall to the floor. The chamber was sparse, to say the least. There was a clock on the southern wall and not a window to speak of. A meager cot was pushed up against the wall, a nightstand next to it, and a locker for clothes in the corner with a sink for freshening up. He splashed some cold water on his face and neck and toweled off slowly, taking a selfish moment to enjoy the chill on his flesh.   
He opened his eyes after a long moment and took a good, long look in the mirror. He looked tired.  
“What are you doing here, you crazy s-o-b?” He asked himself with a sigh and a shake of his head. 

McCoy owned precious little these days, just a few day’s worth of clothes and some old photographs. Jocelyn had taken everything else and he had never bothered to rebuild after that.  
He changed into fresh clothes, eager to be rid of the grimy feeling of travel, and put the rest away before he sat on his bed (‘bed’ here being used liberally) and flicked through the photos. There were a few of his dad, a few from med school, one of Christine Chapel and that evil cat of hers, but most of them were of her.  
She looked like him, his Johanna. The last picture he had of her was from two years ago, she had been five then, but even then the resemblance was uncanny. She had his eyes, his mouth, even his frown, and lord knows she had his temper, but she was also quick to laugh and smart as a whip.   
He had moved them as far inland as he could after the incident and counted his lucky stars everyday that Jocelyn had had the good sense to stay there after the split. He checked his watch as he laid the photos on the nightstand. It was permanently set to US central time and read a little past 1 in the afternoon. He frowned; she would be in school at that time. He’d have to call her later. 

“Lights off,” he muttered as he plopped back onto the cot with a tired sigh. He was tired, so tired that he could feel it in his chest, but sleep wouldn’t come. He watched the minutes tick by on the clock for close to an hour before he gave it up as a lost cause and slung his legs over the edge over the cot. If he couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t talk to his girl, he may as well go visit his other.

 

McCoy found himself sitting on the third floor of the Shatterdome, his long legs dangling over the edge as he leans against the rail as he watched the maintenance teams put the finishing touches on Gipsy. Few people knew that she almost had a very different name.   
His watch read 2:45 central time which put it at nearly two in the morning in Hong Kong, Still, the Shatterdome was alive.  
McCoy rested his head on his folded arms and watched the swarm below him. He came off as gruff, he knew it just as well as everyone else, but he took a small comfort in people watching. He liked knowing people, figuring them out, learning their habits, they joys, their sorrows.

The welder working on Gipsy’s left shoulder favored his left hand and, judging by the shanty he sang over the torch’s din, he used to be a sailor before the world went to kaiju blue hell.   
There was a communications engineer that paced somewhere behind him. So far, she had walked three laps around the third floor, and clicked her pen compulsively as she muttered to herself in an impressive array of languages. McCoy recognized Spanish, Russian, and Cantonese, and there were a few that he couldn’t place. 

A janitor on the ground floor danced with his broom as he swept. Fella had a mean moonwalk. McCoy smiled to himself.

“Incredible, isn’t she?”  
Someone took the liberty of plopping down right next to him but McCoy couldn’t find it in himself to bite at the intrusion.  
“Yeah, she is,” he says, sounding almost fond even to his own ears. He extended a hand. “McCoy.”  
“Jim Kirk,” the stranger took his hand in a firm shake. He had a swollen cheek and napkins hanging out of his nose but he had the bluest eyes that McCoy had even seen and it looked like hope still lived in them.   
“Kirk,” McCoy repeated, “Pleasure. What brings you here to the jolly old end of the world?”  
Kirk laughed a little and shook his head in a self-deprecating manner that was all too familiar to McCoy. “Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”  
“Pike recruited you, huh?”   
“That obvious?”  
McCoy snorted. This kid looked just as lost as McCoy felt; he could only imagine what dive Pike had pulled him out of, likely fresh from the fight that had puffed up that pretty face.   
“Lucky guess,” he said. “Pilot?”  
“Not yet,” Jim kicked his legs as they sat and McCoy wondered absently if it was nervous energy or if he just couldn’t sit still for five minutes. “You?”  
“I was,” McCoy sighed and nodded toward Gipsy. “Looks like I am again.”  
Kirk put two and two together but at least he had the good sense not to blurt out ‘you’re him, you’re that guy’ despite the realization that bloomed in those starry eyes of his.  
“Oh,” he said instead and it was so simple that McCoy chuckled a little.   
“I remember that. Well I remember the news.” Kirk sighed and rubbed his hand down his face, “God, that sounds terrible.”  
“I’ve heard worse,” McCoy smiled, actually smiled, and turned his eyes back to Gipsy.  
“But you came back,” Kirk trailed off in question, still swinging his legs.   
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” McCoy repeated Kirk’s own words with a shrug and a sigh, “Nowhere else to go, really. The ex-wife took everything in the divorce, all I’ve got left’s my bones. Figured I’d rather spend the apocalypse in a Jaeger rather than hiding from the past on top of some wall.”  
“Do you think any of this will work?” Kirk gestured around the ‘Dome, to the teams, to the Jaegers.  
 _Not likely_ , McCoy thought.  
“I sure hope so,” he said instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmaooo posting schedule, what posting schedule?

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
